


call it what you want

by syazzypanda



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: ChalexWeek2020, Day 2 - Outsider Perspective, I completely missed that Dean Foundry had a first name on the show y'all, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25581019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syazzypanda/pseuds/syazzypanda
Summary: Charlie, Alex, and their relationship through the eyes of four people—some more unexpected than others—through Season 4.
Relationships: Charlie St. George/Alex Standall
Comments: 14
Kudos: 80
Collections: Chalex Week 2020





	call it what you want

**Author's Note:**

> Hope everyone's still pumped for Chalex Week!!
> 
> This is for Day 2- Outsider Perspective
> 
> Some notes before you go in:  
> 1\. Charlie had an elaborate promposal to ask a girl to Homecoming in season 3.  
> 2\. This was really fun to write and it definitely didn't go the way I planned. 
> 
> Thank you AeonWing for beta-ing this <3
> 
> Hope you enjoy.

Zach was _exhausted_.

In the past 24 hours, he had saved Alex from drowning, dragged them both out from a lake, found out that his best friend had been seeing Winston, was terrorised by a possible axe murderer and worst of all, fucking Diego Torres and Luke Holliday just _had to be_ part of that last experience. 

Fine, maybe he was being dramatic about that last part. 

But all in all, Zach didn’t think that he was being dramatic about wanting some goddamn peace and quiet for the rest of his shitty life. 

Misery loves company, so that was how he ended up sitting with Jessica on the bus ride home. Their conversations had been muted, and Zach could see that Jessica was engaged in a furious back and forth texting match with Ani, no doubt filling her in on their collective hell of a weekend. 

The whole bus had gone quiet after a while. Zach found himself staring outside the window beyond Jessica’s head, watching the line of trees zip past and just letting his mind wander. There was a tight spot in his neck, and he turned his face in the other direction to stretch it out a bit. 

Which was how he saw them.

On the other side of the bus and a few seats behind them, Alex had his head planted firmly on Charlie’s shoulder. It looked as if they had been listening to something on Charlie’s phone before he dozed off. He still had an earphone in his ear, the wires falling between them with Charlie having the other end. 

It was adorable. But what stuck in Zach’s mind was the look on Charlie’s face. He was completely still, almost unblinking, almost as if he thought that the mere idea of moving would jostle Alex awake. He had slouched down a little to accommodate for their height difference, fingers drumming in his lap in a way that Zach would attribute to nerves. 

Zach wanted to nudge Jessica but didn’t want to make it too obvious that he was staring. So he turned away. 

After a while, Jessica fell asleep, leaning heavily against him with her head occasionally bobbing against his own shoulder. Zach alternated between staring outside and scrolling through his phone, but as they were rounding the last few corners that will bring them back to Liberty, he turned around once more. 

Charlie’s fingers had stilled and his eyes were closed, his head resting against the top of Alex’s head. Sleep seemed to have given them both a brief respite from the hellscape that their lives had become. They seemed to be at peace. Even if it looked like Alex had drooled a bit on Charlie’s shoulder.

* * *

To be honest, Tony thought observing Charlie’s very obvious crush was a welcome distraction to their usual problems. It was a taste of teenage normalcy that had become largely absent from their lives over the past few years.

So yeah, between missing his family and laundering money from the garage, covering up a murder, whatever the _hell_ it is going on with Tyler… seeing Charlie stare at Alex as if he had hung the moon and stars in the sky did bring a smile to his face. He was sure he had seen the exact same expression on Caleb’s face just that morning. 

It wasn’t all too surprising for Tony to walk in on them kissing in the computer lab after the drill. For a fraction of a second, he considered backing out to give them some space, but of course, in the terribly scripted, genre-bending feature film that was their lives, he had to interrupt them.

Alex broke the kiss when he whipped around to face him, breathless and surprised. It was Charlie’s expression that flashed in Tony’s mind periodically over the next few weeks. Charlie wasn’t even looking at him, intent on staring at Alex with the sort of reverence and adoration that poets have spent millennia writing about. 

Tony did feel somewhat bad interrupting them.

* * *

Betty always wondered if the senior class was cursed. Scratch that, she was pretty sure the senior class and the whole fucking school was cursed. Her Google search for ‘average student deaths in California’ hadn’t yielded any satisfactory results, but she had a strong inclination that four deaths within the same class should probably be a bigger issue.

Then, between the sudden presence of police in school, the weird graffiti saying that Monty was framed, the cameras popping up everywhere, Clay Jensen showing up at the Love Is Love Dance covered in what seemed like blood, the lockdown drill, Clay Jensen waving a gun around (How is he still in school??), her friend Inez pulls her aside and tells her that she saw her ex-boyfriend kissing another boy in the computer lab.

Betty had not spoken to Charlie in a while. It wasn’t that they had a _bad_ break up, in fact they agreed that they worked better as friends and that they valued each other’s presence in their lives and wanted to continue building on that. Nothing particularly interesting happened to make them stop talking, but they had drifted apart in that all too familiar way that high school relationships tend to go, so yeah, Betty had not spoken to Charlie in a while. 

Betty honestly didn't really care who he was kissing these days. 

Then, because Liberty High is _cursed_ , a racist police officer pulls a gun on a student which led to Clay Jensen vocalising the immortal words “fuck you, motherfucker” to Principal Bolan’s face, then proceeded to walk out with Jessica Davis along with the entire student body. How was Clay Jensen still a student here?

‘Riot police descending on unarmed teenagers’ wasn’t in the Liberty Hell scorecard that she and her friends had come up with, but given the trajectory of their high school experience it didn’t come as too much of a surprise either. 

Betty weaved through the crowd, eyes scanning through the chaos to find her friends. She stuck to the sidelines, dodging limbs and the liberal swinging of police batons. She couldn’t find Inez, or Mark, or Sophie, but instead she saw Charlie—sweet, gentle Charlie—lying on the ground, unmoving. 

“Charlie!” 

That was what she was thinking, but the voice that screamed his name wasn’t hers. Someone shoved passed her though, and she very nearly lost her footing but caught herself just in time to see someone else on their knees beside Charlie. He was screaming his name, begging him to get up. It was almost the most emotional thing Betty had seen today.

She started forwards, but of course, _of_ _course,_ a car blew up and she dropped to the ground, bracing her face from the sudden, flaring heatwave. 

She wouldn’t have been surprised if that was Clay fucking Jensen’s fault too. 

* * *

Dean Foundry knew that the Liberty High students probably called him a cartoon supervillain behind his back. His husband had told him that if he didn’t walk around, lurk in the background, and generally dress like a Bond villain all the time he could probably change that perception.

They had made plans to drive up to visit some old friends over the weekend, but then Principal Bolan had green-lit the senior prom. So instead of being in a beautiful estate in upstate California, Hansen Foundry and his husband were at Liberty High’s senior prom, watching Jessica Davis crown Charlie St. George and Alex Standall prom royalty. 

A part of him, a self-preserving, protective part of him, had proactively started scanning the room for any sign of trouble the moment Jessica had said “king and king”. He had done his research on the school before taking the job. He knew of the culture. His eyes narrowed in on the group of jocks clustered off to the side, and it was only when his husband touched his arm that he realised that his knuckles had gone white by his sides.

“Well, will you look at that,” Josh muttered softly. So Hansen looked.

St. George and Standall were murmuring something between themselves, eyes on and for each other as if they were the only two in the room. It was the softest thing that Hansen Foundry had seen from the student’s in the school, and there was something about the openness, the gentleness of it all, that made him instead look at his husband. 

Josh Foundry-King was as beautiful now as when they had met decades ago. They had found each other during a time of grief when they lost a mutual friend and had never let go. It had been Hansen’s third funeral for the year, and later he and Josh would go on to five more. 

They had gone back to their apartment after each funeral and went to bed together. Their apartment had two bedrooms, because so many people don’t think of Josh as anything other than Hansen’s roommate. 

Josh’s gasp brought Hansen back to the present. His husband’s gorgeous, dark eyes were misty, and when Hansen turned around he saw why. The two boys were kissing, the crowd around them exploding in happy sighs and cheers. 

They broke apart from the kiss, their smiles soft and loving. The two boys pulled away, then like sunflowers reaching for the sun, they collapsed into each other’s arms and stayed there. Indivisible. 

As the crowd descended around them, the music swelling into a popular dance beat that he had heard coming from his niece’s room all too often, Hansen touched Josh’s elbow, “I believe congratulations are in order for the king and king.”

Josh turned and smiled at him, “The Bond villain congratulating them is definitely the plot twist they need for the night.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading and I would love to hear your thoughts on this!
> 
> For anyone interested in more info about Chalex Week, check out:  
> https://chalexweek2020.tumblr.com/information  
> https://twitter.com/ChalexWeek


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